


A Very Special Christmas Carol

by JuLeia



Category: Tales of Vesperia
Genre: A Christmas Carol, Christmas, Gen, Holidays, Implied Estelle x Rita, Loneliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-25 09:48:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17119064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JuLeia/pseuds/JuLeia
Summary: Christmas doesn't mean anything to the grumpy loner Rita Mordio.Spending her holidays alone in a bar rather than celebrating has become a habit of hers.Until an unexpected visit of who appears to be Rita's guardian angel turns things upside down.





	A Very Special Christmas Carol

**Author's Note:**

> Ho Ho Ho!
> 
> Merry Christmas, everyone.
> 
> I'm back with another holiday oneshot, this time focusing on the lovely Rita Mordio - perfectly in time for the upcoming release of Tales of Vesperia's Definitive Edition.
> 
> Have fun reading!

“Can I get you something special today, Miss Mordio?”  
The girl grumbled.  
“Just the usual,” she said.  
Glasses clinked as the barkeeper picked up the bottle of Brandy to pour in his shaker.  
“Not even on Christmas Eve you break your habits, huh?”  
Her head supported by her arm, she glanced up at him, the corners of her mouth not even flinching.  
“All right, all right,” he laughed, “not a chatty day today, I understand.”  
Rita shifted in her seat and straightened her back. To her left, a man and a woman were sitting next to each other, laughing as they sipped their drinks out of glasses painted with mistletoe-patterns.  
To her right, an elderly man stared at his bottle of beer, emotionless.  
She sympathized more with the latter.  
This overjoyed Christmas spirit had been getting on her nerves for weeks now.  
“One sidecar for the lovely young lady,” the barkeeper said as he placed the sugar-coated glass in front of her.  
She nodded at him and placed the glass at her mouth. The sugar sticking to her lips enhanced the sweet-sourly flavour of the cocktail. For the first time in a while, she smiled.  
“There you go,” the man in front of her said. He dried a glass with his white towel.  
“You don’t ever give up, do you, Raven?”  
The couple next to Rita laughed out loud. She tried to ignore them.  
“Of course I don’t. Now come on Rits, you know I gladly welcome you at my bar, but don’tcha have a better place to spend your holiday at?”  
The man with hair as black as his name placed his elbow in front of hers on the counter, their faces a lot more close now. Brown eyes gazed into hers.  
The intense look made her uncomfortable.  
She felt her cheeks warming up and looked at the table instead, taking a sip.  
“No,” she said, “now stop asking.”  
Raven sighed and moved away. He placed the glass onto the shelf behind him.  
The girl exhaled slowly. She came here to take her mind off what was bothering her, not to be reminded of it. Her hand moved the glass automatically.  
“You might be grumpy, but you are still my favorite regular.”  
Rita rolled her eyes. “Are you deaf?”  
“Nah,” he grinned, “just a caring gentleman.”  
“Shut up.”  
It took her a while to realize the glass was empty when she set it down. And ordered another one.

 

Raven didn’t give up for the following two drinks either, as usual. He asked her about her research, if she had found a girlfriend yet, or told her stories about Christmas during his youth. She hadn’t been born at that time.  
When she left the bar at two in the morning, Raven didn’t bother telling her to come back. He knew she would in a few days, tops.  
The hearty chatter from inside suddenly died when the heavy door closed after her. She could see her breath build smoke before her face, adding to the perfect picture of a Winter Wonderland in the city of Aspio. The snow on the ground, on rooftops and trees shone blue and yellow depending on the street light above it.  
Otherwise, it was dark. And she felt emptiness overcome her as she began to walk away from the illuminated bar sign that was like her personal beacon of hope.  
At temperatures past the freezing point, she was supposed to feel cold. But she didn’t bother putting her hands into her coat pockets, much less did she think about bringing a hat or gloves to warm her. Her hands stung from the cold, but she didn’t mind. At least she could feel something this way.  
Most of the time, there wasn’t a single spark of emotion in her. It was like she had forgotten how to have feelings.  
Not that they were of much use when you didn’t interact with other people. Besides Raven and the blastia she had at home, she never talked to anyone but herself.  
It was quiet on the whole walk home. Or, as quiet as it could be in this city.  
The cold wind howled and the electricity running through the lamps buzzed occasionally, but it was easy to ignore those things if you were used to them.  
Now and then, she heard people talking behind lighted windows. They were mostly adults, sitting at kitchen tables, probably drinking alcohol and telling stories. Having fun after their Christmas Eve dinner.  
Those people reminded her of the couple in the bar, so she looked away.  
As she arrived on the central plaza, it was impossible to overlook the gigantic Christmas tree. With the many small decorative lights, it easily outshone the gloomy street lamps. It was the brightest source of light in this dark city.  
Rita hated it. She would have to darken her windows again, so she didn’t have to be blinded by this ugly tree all night. It stood way too close to her house.  
Grunting and turning on her heel, she went to face the wooden stairs leading downwards. 

 

With her left foot still in the air, she stopped walking abruptly.  
At first, she thought the glowing beside the only window of her house belonged to another street lamp. But there weren’t any lamps in the area before the cylindrical building she called her home.  
It wasn’t ‘something’ glowing, either. Rather someone.  
There was a person. It was already unusual for anyone to go near her house, but this person wasn’t even standing.  
The girl she saw floated next to the window on the second floor. Feathered wings with a radius twice as wide as her body moved up and down, leaving glowing sparks in the air, like the ones Rita had caused when she tried to tamper with the street lamps one day.  
She turned around, looking back at the plaza. Even rubbed her eyes and checked her balance to see if she had overdone it with the alcohol tonight.  
But the winged girl was still there.  
“H-hey, you!” Rita said, as loud as she allowed herself to be at night.  
The girl turned around and stared at her, with big eyes and hands before her mouth. “Oh no,” she said.  
Rita took the remaining steps down to her house.  
“Who are you!?” she asked, maybe a bit too fiercely. From only a few feet distance, it was easier to make out the girl had shoulder-length, pink hair and was wearing a simple white dress. She also didn’t wear shoes or any kind of coat.  
The sparks came closer to the ground and finally were gone when the girl stood on her eye level.  
She folded her hands awkwardly, slightly bouncing from side to side. For a few seconds, the city behind her seemed to be more interesting than answering Rita’s question.  
But she tapped her foot on the ground repeatedly, still waiting.  
“I’m very sorry...” she said.  
Her voice was crystal clear and so gentle, Rita felt like a warm wave of water was sent her way, rocking her carefully.  
“About not answering my question? I sure hope so,” she managed to say.  
Noticing the girl was a little taller bugged her. She didn’t want to seem helpless and small right now.  
“No.” She tilted her head and smiled, “about being here. You’re not supposed to see me, Rita.”  
One of her eyebrows raised. “Now I have even more questions.”  
In the distance, an owl hooted. It seemed to come from the direction of the city’s entrance.  
Rita sighed. “Listen. I don’t have the time to talk to you – whatever you are – so I’ll just go inside and hope you’ll get away from my house as soon as possible.”  
She walked past the girl. And her heart skipped a beat when she did.  
It made her movement stop for part of a second, until she decided to ignore what she just felt.  
And shoved her hand into the coat pocket to get her keys out instead.

 

Selecting the right key for her front door was harder than she expected, though. She fiddled with her key chain, ice blocks instead of fingers preventing her from having any feeling of what she was doing. It clattered and clattered.  
A warm touch on her upper arm made her stop. She wanted to turn around to remind the strange girl to get away, but instead, she _was_ turned around.  
The hand gripped her light coat tighter and pulled at Rita’s body with a fast, but gentle force. Almost as if she was spinning her around in a dance.  
The keys clattered again, when they fell on the ground.  
She was closer to the angel, she had decided to call her, than ever. If she wasn’t smaller than her, their noses would’ve almost touched. There was a warmth coming from her. But it felt more like rays of the sun than a warm human body.  
“What-” she finally tried to ask. But she had trouble breathing.  
The girl cupped her hands with her own, in the small space between their bodies.  
“You are so cold,” she whispered.  
Rita looked into her eyes, looking wide and sad, like a puppy’s.  
For some reason, her cheeks started heating up. It felt odd, on her frosty skin.  
The angel’s eyes closed when she continued to speak, “Holy power, come to me.”  
A bright light made her look away from their folded hands. But at the same time, warmth spread through Rita’s body, starting from her hands. It crawled quickly under her skin to reach every inch of her body, tickling her.  
Before she knew it, she regained feelings in her fingers, still clasped to the delicate gloved hands of the girl in front of her. Her lips were smiling, but her eyes were sad.  
“What was that?” Rita asked, blinking. It felt like...magic.  
“Probably what you think it is,” she giggled, “but I can’t tell.”  
“You’re very odd.”  
“I guess I am to you.”  
Rita wanted to protest, but knew better than to try again.  
“Thanks...I guess,” she said. Noticing their hands were still touching, she took her fingers back one after another, brushing the other girl’s hands each time. She made a step back.  
“Take care of yourself,” the angel said, “I can only do so much for you.”  
Rita frowned. “What do you mean? Are you my guardian angel or something?”  
Her gloved index finger reached for her smiling lips and she winked.  
“Seems like you can’t tell, either,” she put her hands in her coat pockets, “what a surprise.”  
It wasn’t that Rita was dense enough to miss the angel’s reactions to her assumptions meant that every one of them was right. She was just too tired, too drunk and too skeptic to believe anything of it.  
The girl stared at her strangely again, like a mother would look at her child. Fondly.  
So Rita looked at the ground, searching for her keys. When she found them a few inches next to her left foot, she bent down. As she was still half-kneeling on the ground, touching the cold metal she could feel now, she heard the gentle voice speak again.  
But it sounded different now, much farther away.  
“Farewell, Rita. And have a Merry Christmas.”  
The only thing she saw when she looked up again was a trace of sparkles slowly fading in the night sky.  
She was gone.

 

As Rita opened her eyes, she found herself in the bed on the second floor of her house.  
Bright daylight shone through the window next to her, illuminating half of the room.  
An uncomfortable pressure struck at both sides of her temples. She held a hand to her aching head and grumbled quietly. A hangover, again.  
She had gotten more used to having hangovers lately, so she knew what to do. She started by checking her memory.  
What was the last thing she remembered? She knew she crawled into her bed, street clothes still on, just tossing her coat and her shoes on the floor.  
To look after them, she sat up quickly, regretting it in an instant because her head seemed to pull itself together even harder, causing her more pain.  
Moving more slowly now, she spotted her clothes where she expected them to be, spread on the floor. Good.  
But there was something other than just arriving at home…  
Rita looked around the room. It was messy as always, books scattered about the whole floor and piled up on the desk on the other side. Labelled Erlenmeyer flasks, beakers and test tubes filled with various chemicals she used for experiments stood next to them. Everything was just as usual.  
And yet, she remembered, she saw some kind of pink-haired angel. Was that just a dream?  
“Hah,” she laughed sarcastically, confused about her wild imagination. It had to be a dream. Everything else wouldn’t make any sense.  
She pushed herself off the mattress. Getting up, she had trouble finding her balance and dealing with her pressured head at the same time. A painkiller would be a blessing right now. Hopefully, she still had some self-made left in the drawer downstairs.  
At least she wouldn’t have to get dressed, she thought when she made her way past the messy floor to the wooden ladder.  
Stairs were a waste of space in her already small house.

 

She slowly climbed down, one step at a time.  
Almost on the ground, she noticed something was different. It smelled different, actually.  
Normally, the smell of books and the candle’s smoke filled her house, but now it smelled like baked goods all over the place. It was like entering a bakery. She most definitely wasn’t a baker, though. She didn’t even know how to make cookies.  
Skipping the last few steps of the ladder, she jumped down.  
And couldn’t believe what she saw.  
The first floor was turned into a literal Christmas paradise. There was a Christmas tree in the right back corner, decorated with red baubles and a golden garland. A box wrapped in glittering paper was under it.  
The stove she normally functioned as a blowtorch for experiments was cleaned and there was a plate of cookies placed on it. On the desk next to it were even more plates, filled with so much food a whole family could eat from it.  
She could hear fire crackling in the chimney behind the Christmas tree.  
Everything was sparkling and looked even more festive than the decorations out in the city she scoffed at the day before.  
Rita touched her head and pressed her eyelids together.  
“I’m still dreaming, I’m still dreaming,” she told to herself, like a mantra.  
When she took a peek, nothing had changed.  
She sighed.  
It wasn’t a dream. Neither the angel, nor what she was seeing now.  
Her head buzzed.  
_Whatever._  
She needed to get the painkiller first.

 

After she drank the medicine out of a vial and calmed down a little, she took one of the cookies, eyed it closely and eventually bit into it. She had nothing to lose, she guessed.  
It was still warm, so it fell apart in her mouth immediately. It tasted like sugar and butter and although it had been years since she ate a cookie, she liked it.  
Rita munched for a while, slowly eating it up.  
Then she moved closer to the big, green Christmas tree with heavy steps. Kneeling down next to it, she picked up the box. A sign was attached to the golden ribbon that said “Rita”. On its top left was a drawn wing symbol.  
Rita blinked.  
Underneath the wrapping paper, she revealed a piece of cloth. She unfolded it to discover it was a sweater, and a very extravagant one. It was red, just like most of her standard clothes, but it also had horns and a red nose. Rita snorted – it was a reindeer sweater.  
She stared at it for a few seconds longer, then shrugged and put it on.  
Nothing to lose.  
Although she didn’t expect anything else, she found a book in the package next.  
It was not like the other books laying around in her house. No non-fiction book about hard facts of science, history and such from which she had studied for as long as she could think.  
“A Very Special Christmas Carol,” was its title, written by a certain Estellise Sidos Heurassein.  
She had been sure this whole Christmas fuss was connected to the angel she met at night before.  
Both were surreal happenings she’d never seen before. Not that the decorations here weren’t real, but no one could have sneaked into her house and set this all up while she was sleeping. The tree wouldn’t even fit through her front door.  
Now, she was sure she could name the angel, too.  
Estellise.  
She smirked.  
There was a cutesy drawing on the cover of the book, a little girl in front of a great Christmas tree. It seemed to be a children’s book or some kind of fairytale. Rita barely knew anything about fictional books.  
It seemed the drawing on the cover wasn’t the only she would see. Rita would definitely go with saying it was a children’s book now, because it had a big imagine on one side, and just a little bit of text on the other, page after page.

 

“There was once a little girl,” she read aloud, “who lost her parents. She was all alone in this world and she was sad about it.” The picture showed the same little girl from the cover, but she didn’t look so childishly curious any more. She was standing there, looking at the ground and crying.  
The corners of Rita’s mouth sank.  
She turned the page.  
“The little girl didn’t want to be alone. So when she found no one else, she decided to make friends with the machines she was so close with – the blastia,” she continued and raised her eyebrow.  
“But the machines stayed her only friends for many years. The little girl had become scared to talk to anyone. So when Christmas came every year...”  
She kept turning the pages hastily, moving to sit cross-legged so she was more comfortable.  
“The spirits of Christmas didn’t reach her. Because Christmas was the day her father left the little girl, she didn’t want to celebrate it. So she was still alone.”  
Her eyes moved to the picture on their own, seeing the girl close a door in front of three friendly-looking spirits.  
She turned.  
“The little girl grew into a lonely woman. She started to believe she couldn’t be loved, so she shut her heart,” Rita’s voice cracked and she swallowed. The picture now showed a woman that looked more like her than ever. Shoulders and head hanging, she sat at a desk while you could see lights sparkle and children having snowball fights outside.  
“Little did she know, there had always been someone looking out for her. Someone who was sad when she was, happy when she was, who grew up with her all along.”  
The picture was almost the same as the last one, but from a different angle. You could see the rooftop, and on it, a little figure. Rita’s eyes widened. It looked like the angel, Estellise. She was lying there, watching the woman at the desk.  
“But the girl never noticed. Until this very special Christmas Day, eighteen years after her birth…”  
Rita stopped reading.  
That was it.  
There weren’t any more pages left to read.  
She could hear the fire crackling nearby again.  
The last picture wasn’t like the others, too. It was less detailed, looked more like a doodle. And it showed the girl with wings, with an outstretched tongue and smiling.  
“Merry Christmas,” it said underneath her.  
Rita kept staring at the last page.  
“This is ridiculous,” she said under her breath as a single sob escaped her lips.  
She was just shown the entire story of her life, packed in a children’s book. Written by someone she didn’t know. Someone she couldn’t believe existed.  
How _could_ she even know?  
A tear splashed on the image, next to doodle-Estellise’s face.  
She could see her fingers grabbing onto the book tighter, creasing the corners of the paper a little.  
It had been a while since she last cried. Especially about this. She had gotten used to her constant loneliness, sadness. She had learned to deal with it. To only talk to her barkeeper and other researchers if she had to. Got used to scaring others with her attitude, so they didn’t even want to approach her.  
She thought she had lost enough tears about this in her teens and swore to stop fretting over it.  
Seems she broke her own promise.  
The hot, salty water warmed up her face, and she reached her arm up to dry it with the fabric of the sweater. It was pleasantly soft, but not the best material to absorb water, synthetic probably. She was rather smearing the tears all around on her face than drying them. But it was better than nothing, for now.

 

Rita closed the book, shivering, placing it on the wrapping paper in front of her. She pushed the remaining ribbon pieces off her legs.  
With folded hands in her lap, she looked up and bit her lip. Only a single tear rolled down her cheek instead of a waterfall. Half of the ceiling was the wooden upper floor, half of it the actual, rounded roof. The window made the second floor a lot brighter than downstairs, in that cosy atmosphere.  
She felt a strange warmth embrace the left side of her chest.  
Despite it making her cry, this was the first Christmas present Rita had ever gotten.  
And she felt...grateful for it.  
“Thank you, Estellise,” she whispered.  
She felt silly saying the words that had laid on her tongue aloud. No one was here.  
But she still hoped her words could reach the mysterious angel. Somewhere, up there, or wherever she was supposed to be.

 

A loud knock on the other side of the room made Rita cringe.  
She started coughing because of the short, panicking breaths she took. Who would ever come to her door, on this day?  
Her legs felt like pudding when she heaved herself off the floor, hectically trying to wipe the tears away from her face with the sweater again. It didn’t have any better effect, of course.  
Still, no one should see she was crying. Although her red eyes would probably give her away at a closer look, anyway. So she could only hope that whoever was there wouldn’t look at her long enough.  
When she reached the door, she only opened it wide enough to peek outside.  
“Y-you” she said hoarsely. She touched her throat and cleared it, trying not to cough again.  
Outside, the raven-black haired barkeeper was standing, accompanied by other people Rita didn’t know. She had to open the door a bit wider to see them. They were two guys and a girl, all three of them looked younger than Raven. And, she noticed as she looked down, a dog.  
“Merry Christmas, Rita,” the familiar voice said and its owner grinned, “I figured you would be alone today, so I brought some friends.” He turned around and pointed at each of them.  
“Those are Yuri, Karol, Judith and-”  
The dog with the scar on his left eye barked.  
“Repede,” the man with the long hair smiled.  
Rita shifted her weight from the left to her right foot. She grabbed the door’s handle tighter. It hurt a little, because she pressed her fingernails into her hand.  
“I really don’t think you should all come here,” she said, voice still unsteady.  
Raven came closer to the door and she had to hold herself from taking a step back.  
“But we really want to,” he leaned against the door’s frame.  
He scanned her as far as he could, through the little gap between door and wall. Obviously, he spotted something was wrong. He looked at her with this worried gaze she couldn’t stand, so she looked past him, at the others.  
The lady with the purple hair walked up to her, too. Although she was wearing a turtleneck sweater, her especially well-formed body caught Rita’s eye. She forced herself to concentrate on her face, which was no less pretty.  
“Raven told us about you and we all agreed we don’t want you to spend Christmas alone,” she said with a smile, “so why don’t you let us in so we can get to know each other, Rita?”  
Rita thought about Estellise’s book. How it ended with mentioning her eighteenth Christmas, which was today. Did she know this was about to happen? Or did she go to meet Raven, too, to hire him?  
“I promise we’ll be nice.” She looked at the short boy who just spoke.  
In any case, she wanted to believe Estellise meant well for her. Believing anything without proof was normally not something she would do, but this day was already weird enough to be considered normal.  
She closed her eyes for a second, then dragged the door wide open, stepping aside.  
“Fine,” she said, pulling the corners of her mouth slightly upwards.  
Raven ruffled her head when he passed, messing her bedhead up even more.  
“Jerk,” she said and rolled her eyes.  
He just grinned.  
The others thanked her and smiled when they entered.  
There had probably never been more people in her house at once. This would need some time to get used to. As well as talking to people.

 

Before she closed the door, she took a peek at the rooftop and the small space before her house.  
There wasn’t anyone else.  
No strange pink-haired angel in a white dress.  
She looked up at the cloudy sky.  
Whether she had really caused this or not, or really existed or not, Rita knew she wouldn’t stop thinking about Estellise. She left too much of an impact on her.  
And, she realized as she turned around, wouldn’t stop missing her, too.  
The door closed with a thud.


End file.
